To Cast the Weighted Die
by untethered
Summary: Magic, angst, and organized crime.  Abandoned at an orphanage, discovered by a lover from a past life, trained as a courtesan, spurned by his match and drawn into games of politics, seduction, and power by his protector and lord, Harry's life is far from uninteresting. AU SLASH LV/HP, OMC/HP
1. Foundations

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Fullmetal Alchemist or Harry Potter.

**A/N:** This story is COMPLETELY AU. Including the muggle world. Magic is very different, as are the personalities and/or histories of many of the characters. FAMILIARITY WITH FMA IS NOT REQUIRED.

**Pairings:** LV/HP, various OMC's/HP, Roy/Ed, Al/Winry

**Rating: **M

**Warnings:** Slash, violence, gore, underage sex, prostitution, angst, eventual (slight and atypical) mpreg

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><p><strong>Prologue: A Brief History<strong>

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><p>The world was dark and dead in the beginning, the wrinkled old men say, as if their years have earned them the right to certainty about times and peoples ages gone. It was dark and dead, they say, until wise and loving and all-powerful saintly gods gave it humans, and humans gave it light.<p>

Bullshit, I say.

In the beginning, the world was dark, yes. But the dark is where evils are born and fester, and in all my innumerable years I have never seen anything with as much potential for evil as a man who believes he has the right of it, and throws himself into his ambitions with all the earnestness of his bleeding heart and lusting soul and the holy blessing of his so-called perfect god.

In all my innumerable years, I have never met a god, perfect or otherwise, and no argument of man or miracle of nature will convince me I ever will. But if the potential of any man's soul - for good or evil, or neither or both - is dry tinder, then I _have _met the spark that seeds it into flame. Those few whose souls still burn with it - with the fire that fell from worlds and times of Elsewhere and Nevermore, the fire that gives them forbidden knowledge of those forgotten places - call it a gift. I call it damnation.

Because I have lived for so many, many years, I know what the beginning of this world looked like. It looked like shadows, and from the shadows came the power, and then the power met humanity, and that was all that was needed to make an end.

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><p>January 3rd, 1986<p>

_**RISING DARK LORD OR MINISTER'S MACHINATION?**_

_For months, rumors of a rising dark power have been weaving trepidation into the hearts of wizards and witches across Britain. But have they any merit? Or is the rising panic a political scheme of Minister Pius Thicknesse as he prepares for his 1987 campaign?_

_ Lucius Malfoy, Lord of the Malfoy estates and former Senior Advisor to the Minister of Magic, claims that the rumors were most likely woven for political gain. Lord Malfoy, who defected from the Minister's inner circle last month after a disagreement regarding the recently amended Magical Children Protection Act, claims to have overheard a highly incriminating floo conversation between the Minister and Senior Undersecretary Cornelius Fudge..._

March 15th, 1986

_**MINISTER OF MAGIC ASSASSINATED - THE WORK OF A DARK LORD?**_

_Minister of Magic Pius Thicknesse was found dead in his office this morning by Senior Undersecretary-cum-Acting Minister Cornelius Fudge and Lucius Malfoy, whose status as Senior Advisor to the Minister was reinstated this morning. The magical signature recorded by the office's wards indicates that the spell used was none other than the worst of the Unforgivables - the Killing Curse. Readback triggered a time-delayed enchantment which projected the image of a skull and snake (pictured below) directly over the late Minister's body. _

_ The circumstances of this death indicate that the circulating rumors of a rising Dark Lord may have more merit than was previously believed, Lord Malfoy claims. "Use of the Killing Curse has not been reported in Britain since the fall of the Dark Lord Grindelwald," he said, "and the skull-and-snake design could very likely be some kind of signature - a claiming of the kill." _

_ Lord Malfoy regrets his easy dismissal of the rumors three months ago, and states that it would be advisable for the public to be on guard. "No concrete evidence of a Dark Lord has thus far come to light," he said, "but after this tragedy, it is only a matter of time."_

_ Indeed, the Auror Office has already begun preparing for the worst, not even three hours after the discovery of the body. Rufus Scrimgeour, current head of the Auror Department, warns readers that..._

December 31st, 1986

_**CATASTROPHE AT CLOCHLIATH, OVER TWO THOUSAND DEAD: THE DEBUT OF A DARK LORD**_

_Over two thousand innocent people and counting were killed in the dark hours of this morning, when wizards wearing black cloaks and silver masks raided the muggle town of Graystone and its wizarding superimposition, Clochliath. _

_ Both muggle and magical witnesses report that the disturbance began at roughly 1:30 am, with the arrival of at least 20 black-cloaked wizards in the central square the two towns share. Chaos erupted immediately after, when one of the wizards set the church that marked the first dimensional boundary between the two villages ablaze with fiendfyre. The church's destruction caused the boundary to collapse, and the sudden invasion of the heart of Cochliath into space already occupied by Graystone triggered a massive shockwave and superheated explosion._

_ The cloaked wizards proceeded to destroy the other three boundary stones that separated the two towns, creating a wave of destruction that far surpasses any single event witnessed during the Grindelwald Wars._

_ The first squad of aurors arrived on the scene just as the third boundary collapsed, and were lost in the explosion. (See page A2 for a list of the deceased.) The second wave was accompanied by a team of mediwizards, who began search and rescue as the aurors pursued the wizards responsible for this horror. No evidence of their whereabouts has thus-far been reported, and anyone with any knowledge at all is encouraged to contact the Auror Department. The families and friends of informants can be assured of around-the-clock protection by a team of aurors._

_ Light Lord Albus Dumbledore, who appeared on the scene with the second wave of aurors, estimates that the death toll will rise to at least 15 thousand by the end of the day._

_ Search and rescue and restoration efforts have already begun. Lysander Murus, head of the Division of Dimensional Boundaries and Spacial Construction in the Department of Mysteries, claims that the extent of the destruction isn't yet known. He estimates that..._

October 31st, 1989

_**DARK LORD'S LOVER FELLED BY HIS OWN COUSIN - VICTORY FOR THE LIGHT?**_

_At roughly 10:30 pm on October the 31st, 1989, Hesperus Black, 28-year-old necromancer and match to the Dark Lord, fell beneath the wand of Sirius Orion Black, his 21-year-old first cousin and, with Hesperus' death, Heir to the House of Black._

_ It was towards the end of a raid on the wizarding town of Badgermoor that Sirius entered into a duel with his late cousin. Witnesses report that the two had been battling near each other and defeated their respective opponents simultaneously. Hesperus then invited Sirius to duel with an elaborate bow characteristic of his preferred style, the Moartea Dans(1), but it was Sirius who cast the first spell. After nearly fifteen minutes of traditional closed volley(2), during which time witnesses report obvious superiority on the part of Hesperus, Hesperus was targeted by a curse of unidentified origin, and decided to dodge rather than shield for reasons not apparent. This interrupted the spacial barrier he had cast between himself and Sirius (readers will remember Hesperus' genius with spacial magic), and put him directly in the path of Sirius' _Turraing Croi_ (the Heart-Shock curse, one of the Indefensibles recently unearthed from forgotten Celtic histories by the Dark Lord himself). _

_Hesperus immediately bent forward and fell to his knees, clutching his chest, and then, moments later, fell to the ground, his corpse dissolving into ash. His inferi and Voluit Corpori ceased their attack and collapsed respectively, and the Dark began to retreat. Hesperus' death marked victory for the Light at Badgermoor._

_Hesperus Caelius Black was born on July 31st, 1961 in magical Rome. He was schooled at home until the age of 15, when he began attending the Moscow College of Sorcery, an extremely competitive and secretive institution that specializes in creation magic. It is estimated the he met the Dark Lord two years later in 1978, at which point he dropped out of the MCS and apparently disappeared. He wasn't seen or heard from again until 1986, when evidence of his magical signature was found among shards of the dimensional boundaries that were destroyed during the Clochliath Disaster, indicating that Hesperus was the one to bring them down. It was discovered that he was the match of the Dark Lord when the two of them partner-casted a spell to poison the wards of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry against its inhabitants, beginning the Hogwarts Massacre in the summer of 1987. He disappeared again until the Dark Lord left the country last winter, at which point leadership of the Dark passed to him. Since then, he has participated in every major raid and battle and destroyed numerous dimensional boundaries across the United Kingdom._

_His death is a great victory for the Light - for now. It won't be long until the Dark Lord returns, however, and his fury will cast a shadow of destruction across Britain unlike anything ever seen before. Light Lord Albus Dumbledore, who witnessed the elimination of Hesperus Black, warned the entirety of wizarding Europe to prepare for attacks of the same magnitude as the Clochliath Disaster across the continent in the speech he gave earlier this morning. He said that..._

November 1st, 1991

_**DARK LORD VANQUISHED**_

_At 11:01 pm on October 31st, 1991 - All Hallow's Eve, and the one-year anniversary of the death of his lover, Hesperus Black - the Dark Lord Voldemort was vanquished, ending his reign of death, destruction, and terror._

_ He was felled by Neville Longbottom, the one-year-old son of late aurors and heroes Frank and Alice Longbottom, in the most wondrous magical event in recorded history. _

_The Dark Lord came to the Longbottom Estate near Badgermoor, England with the apparent intention of eliminating the threat to the Dark that Frank and Alice represented. Though his parents were killed defending him, Neville survived the attack unscathed except for a single lightning-bolt-shaped scar on his forehead. It appears as though the same Killing Curse that felled his parents and tens of thousands of witches and wizards before him rebounded, striking down the Dark Lord and leaving only ashes behind._

_Neville has been left in the custody of his grandmother, Augusta Longbottom, in the tragic event of his parent's death. _

_Light Lord Albus Dumbledore is scheduled to give a speech this afternoon at the Clochliath Memorial, honoring Neville Longbottom and those who have given their lives to see Darkness defeated._

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><p><strong>Chapter One: Foundations<strong>

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><p><strong>November 15th, 2002<strong>

**Northern England**

The slender boy stood before a wall in one of the orphanage's many too-small bedrooms, close enough for his lips to brush the chilly stone. "Hurt them," he whispered, letting his eyes fall closed as the power-wrongness-_something_ rose up within him, surging against the boundary of his skin in time with the pounding of his heart. "Hurt them when you sense fear and pain in us, and when we're trapped and can't get out. Hurt them." He fell silent, breathing quietly for long moments as he lost himself in the wall and the simple awareness it had of its own existence. He felt, in between steady breaths and heartbeats, the three-dimensional map of fissures and cracks that marred it, and the awesome, tiny energy of the atoms that held it together. He breathed, breathed, breathed, learning the ages that shaped the stone and the strength of the forces sustaining it.

Moments and eons passed together before green eyes opened and he bled his will through the wall as hard and fast as completely as he could. The uncomplicated awareness of the stone fluttered briefly as it accepted his intentions and wove them with its own.

He stepped back, taking a moment to readjust to warmth and movement and sensation, and smiled.

The next time one of the visiting clergymen attempted to touch and hurt a resisting child, the very walls of the orphanage would lend the force of their existence to its protection.

His job done, the slim boy brushed black bangs away from his sweaty forehead and turned to face the children who witnessed his persuasion of the wall. They sat beside a worn toy chest, dolls and other knickknacks abandoned in favor of the spectacle he presented. Despite the mocking edge of their laughter and the fear that shone from their eyes, he felt content: he was the only one who could and _would _protect them, and he was doing everything within his power.

_His power. _Such a strange thought. It was a stranger reality, though, that _he, _Theron Potter, a weak, bullied and underfed eleven-year-old orphan could enchant walls and floors and furniture to adapt and enact his will, bend light and shadow into dancing pictures, and hear whispers on breezes that no one else could feel. _Off,_ the adults whispered, with behind-the-hand smiles and mocking eyes, when they caught him crooning softly to the doors. _Off, _as if his mind were a perishable food left alone for too long. And he brushed their harshness off every time, because he _knew_ on a fundamental, instinctual level that he was _not_ off and that they didn't have the whole picture, whatever it may be, and that he wouldn't fit, no matter how hard he tried, until they did - if they ever did.

So he'd stopped trying.

Theron turned away from the wall and left the room, ignoring the snickers of the children as they went back to their games. They were cruel, yes, but it was an innocent cruelty, born of fear of something they didn't understand and the pressure they felt to emulate their elders. No, he did not deserve it (he _was_ doing everything in his power to protect them, after all) but they deserved the intentional, open-eyed cruelty and perversion of the adults who were supposed to take care of them even less.

Theron made his way down the narrow, moaning wooden staircase, bathed in the silver-gray daylight that shone weakly through a leaded window two floors above his head. The whole place smelled of dust and damp and cold gray stone, all delicately shadowed with desperation and around-the-corner hopelessness. Children were made to share small rooms and smaller beds, and the caretakers never were quite able to keep all of the stray cats out. Cobwebs sloped across the peaked ceiling and grimy, cracked windows, and pigeons occasionally took up residence in the rafters. It had been a church, the matron said, during the years before the Age-long War - a place where a forgotten people had gathered to beg fortune and forgiveness from a forgotten god. And though Theron knew the building was beautiful in its own ancient, weathered way, his memories had colored it with all of the misery of his childhood and the childhoods of the children he lived with. To Theron, the Territory 3 House of Charity was an ugly place - just another failed attempt to fix what was broken by lifetimes of war, made by people who cared too little and regretted too late.

The orphanage was poor, Theron knew. There was rarely enough food to fill the stomachs of every child to their satisfaction, and the older children often went without to ensure that the younger were not in too much pain. Sickness was rampant, especially during the fall and winter months, when the patched and holey clothing they all wore failed to keep the chill from their lungs. School was Theron's only relief from the desolation, but with the recently growing problem of bullies, even books and the temptation of a whole world of undiscovered knowledge, unrelated to this pathetic existence - a world in which he could be and _was_ undeniably exceptional - were not enough to distract him.

And now, with the impending visit of the clergymen - a group of six men that stayed at the orphanage twice a year, in rooms the children really couldn't afford to give up - none of his usual means of entertainment were working. He wasn't an idiot; he'd noticed that the food was always fresher after they visited, that there were more fruits and vegetables, that some of the older children got new clothes. But he had also noticed that the weeks of their stay marked the only time those same older children ate at the head table with the guests, that the caretakers made them bathe before dinner, and that sometimes they wouldn't come back to their beds during the night. He hoped desperately that he was still too young to tempt them.

_Salvation_, the clergymen claimed their purpose was. Theron thought it disgusting that he lived in a world where a child's salvation was found in the bed of the worst of humanity's sinners.

Theron pushed open a battered wooden door, wincing as its hinges shrieked gratingly, and stepped into the chilly courtyard. He shivered, pulling his threadbare jumper tight around his bony ribcage and tucking his hands into his armpits. A small group of younger kids was kicking a ball back and forth near the rusted front gate, their breath puffing silver clouds across their faces, their cheeks and fingers pink with cold. He inventoried their clothing - ragged tee-shirts and patched jeans, with no gloves or hats or coats to speak of - and felt tired.

The sky was a uniform blanket of gray clouds, heavy and dark with the weight of winter. A chilling wind smelling sharply of smog and snow stirred brittle brown leaves around his feet as he set out for the kitchens, resigned to the hours of work required to prepare dinner. He hated his turn on the meal shift, mostly because it meant he had to deal with the problem of their dwindling rations head-on, and wonder how he would tell the children he protected that there wasn't enough food to fill their sore bellies - again.

An unnaturally shrill cry from one of the ball-players pulled him from his musings as he made to climb the steps to the kitchen door, carefully navigating ragged, starving cats and chickens with feathers puffed against the cold. He looked over his shoulder, searching for the source; a small boy - Christopher - knelt on the ground with his arm cradled against his side and a small patch of blood staining his shirt. Theron was at his side in only a moment.

"What happened, Celeste?" he asked his favorite of the younger children, since the injured child was crying too hard to speak, even if his sobs were carefully muffled. Celeste was six - young enough to maintain her innocence, but old enough to at least partially understand the seriousness of the orphanage's situation - and had never quite believed the others when they told her Theron was wicked.

"He fell when he saw that man pop out of the air," she said, her voice trembling and confused. Theron looked up sharply from his study of the wound - a nasty scrape, and perhaps a sprain to the wrist - and he glanced in the direction the girl was pointing.

A man stood across the courtyard, one that was perhaps in his late twenties or early thirties, with pale skin and dark hair styled in a fashion that reminded Theron of military men from the Second World War. He was tall and lean and classically, hawkishly handsome, with a strong jaw and an aristocratic nose and high, blade-sharp cheekbones. His eyes were dark and long under sloping black brows, and as he stared at Theron with an intensity that made his blood pound, he swore they shone with an unnatural crimson gleam.

And the air around him _sang._

It was a heartbeat and an aria, the pulse of a drum and the trill of a violin, and it called to Theron on a level that was profound. All people had an effect on the currents - the word Theron had given to the whispers and winds that only he could hear and feel, the ones that crooned sweetly about the power in the stones and the force behind existence, and that told him he could know it, own it, _wield _it, if only he would listen a little harder - but none even a fraction as much as this man. The aura was powerful and enticing and darker than black, reminding Theron of the things that stirred in shadows and forbidden, hated pleasures, and it caressed him with heat and feeling and _life_ like he had never known. His heart pounded, his breath rasped too quickly past his lips, his world narrowed and shifted until he could see nothing but this man, the only clarity in a universe of blurs and nothings.

Theron _wanted _him. He wanted his power and the intensity of his attention. He wanted the thrilling danger of his presence and the burn it sang into his bones. He wanted the existence the power promised, one that danced to a faster beat in ballrooms of sharp edges and lovely painted masks. He wanted to _feel._

The man smirked as if he knew Theron's thoughts, one eyebrow climbing his forehead, and the spell broke.

"-Theron!" Celeste was saying, her small hands pulling at his sleeve. The boy turned reluctantly to look at her, though his awareness of the man didn't fade. "He needs a bandaid, Theron!"

"I know, I know," he murmured absently, grasping the sniffling boy underneath the arms and heaving himself into a standing position, with the child on his hip. He noted distractedly that he probably should have been more careful of the injured wrist when Christopher cried out again.

As he made his way to the kitchen door, he couldn't resist another glance at the man. He loomed on the other side of the gate, his posture casual and tall, hands lost in the pockets of the high-collared black trench coat and his scarlet scarf stirring gently in the cold wind. His eyebrow was still raised, and the smirk had widened. He was still only looking at Theron.

Then Celeste opened the door, and they stepped inside, and the man was gone.

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><p>With nightfall came the first snow of the season. The children huddled around grimy windows as the first flakes drifted slowly and silently out of the darkness and into the pool of light spilling from the orphanage. The younger years exclaimed excitedly over the great battles they would wage come morning, while their elders stood vigil behind them, eyes shadowed with memories of winters past and anticipation of the losses they knew their makeshift family would suffer.<p>

It was long after the children had gone to bed, the young ones wriggling and grinning, their elders grim-faced and tired, that something else came out of the darkness.

Muffled laughter, slurred and masculine, stirred Theron from his study of his bedroom's cracked ceiling and memories of the mysterious, beautiful man. He blinked, rolling quietly out of the bed he shared with two other boys, and padded softly to a window curtained more against cold drafts than sunlight. The muted whine of the front gate drifted through missing panes as he shifted the threadbare fabric aside and peered out into the night.

Up the short front walk they came, their feet crunching in the newly fallen snow and leaving behind a mess of prints where once had been perfect, glittering white. Theron could just make out seven shadowed forms, six of them bulky and ungainly, the seventh slender, small, and light. Theron had no recollection of there having been a seventh one before.

But that didn't matter, because suddenly they were at the front door, laughing and talking and beating the knocker against the wood without regard to the many children slumbering inside. Theron heard soft, unsteady cursing and rapid footsteps deep within the house as Matron Cole left her drink to greet them.

Theron let the curtain fall back across the window and returned to bed, eager to escape the chilly stone beneath his feet. He burrowed deep into well-worn blankets, curling against the warm back of his bedmate and hoping the boy wouldn't wake before Theron realized and could move away. He knew there would be no escape into dreams this night.

The clergymen had arrived.

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><p><strong>(1)<strong> _Moartea Dans: _Death Dance - a fast-paced, light-footed offensive dueling style that aims to kill rather than capture or subdue.

**(2)** Traditional closed volley: One-on-one dueling; the participants don't target and aren't targeted by any other wizard than the one they have formally entered into a duel with.

**Posted 01.16.2012**

**Edited 07.17.2012**

**Edited 11.04.2012**


	2. Salvation

**IMPORTANT: **If you read Chapter One prior to 11/4/2012, you might want to read it again. I've completely revamped it and added a small section to the end. The prologue has remained unchanged.

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Fullmetal Alchemist or Harry Potter.

**A/N:** I'd like to thank everyone who reviewed the last chapter. **DawnScarlet19610** - thank you for officially (according to my friend) inducting me into ff.n authordom with your highly ridiculous and hypocritical flame.

**Rating: **M

**Warnings: **References to child prostitution and paedophilia (nothing happens to Theron)

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><p><strong>Chapter Two: Salvation<strong>

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><p>It was only after the first light of dawn kissed the world gray that Theron finally slept.<p>

He dreamt _that dream_ again - the one that left him with a pounding heart and sweat-soaked nightshirt and the gut-wrenching feeling that he had forgotten something critical.

It always began the same way. Beams of light - yellow, scarlet, poisonous green - cut blinding streaks across a shadowed, unfamiliar village square and set the black sky above on fire. The air was heavy with the stench of blood and burning flesh and something else, something tangy and sharp that raised the hairs on the back of his neck and itched across his skin. His heart pounded, and that strange electric _something _that came from within and all around him - that almost _was _him - pounded with it.

He was power, he was death; he was conqueror, victor, executioner. He had never known such joy.

Time rushed on to the rhythm of screaming and shouting and laughing and the hiss of his own breath racing past his lips, and then came the careless, taunting invitation - "A duel, dear Cousin?" - and everything stopped.

And then nothing, nothing, nothing, and Theron was prepared to wake up.

But this time something had changed. There was that sensation again, the electric heaviness that itched and sang across his skin, but it was _other_ _(Don't you know me, Hesperus?)_ and the difference made it beautiful.

Theron - or something within him - _did _knowthis feeling. It dominated his awareness like a half-forgotten song, pulling his mind into a dance of thought and memory that was both foreign and familiar. Flashes of people and places he had never seen and lessons he had never learned built new framework for his thoughts, blending with his own experiences to create a motley mindscape seemingly shared by two lifetimes: his, and someone else's, someone he _was _and _wasn't_, someone he couldn't fully remember, but that maybe, _impossibly_, he had once been.

_(Don't you remember, Hesperus?)_

Woven into every bit of the Other mind was the impression of a man - dark hair, black eyes, and a quick, cunning smirk - but also of something more. Power and heat, elegance and ambition, calculation and passion - all threaded through with broken recollections of twisted sheets and an owning weight above him and the burn of skin on skin. But most of all there was an otherworldly sense of _sameness_, and the realization that Theron and this man were one being, one power, forced to exist in two pieces, and _if only they could get a little closer_-

_(Hesperus...)_ came the voice - _his _voice - deadly and deep, worshipping a name Theron had never heard but somehow knew was his. And everything Theron was resonated with the compulsion to answer that call, to go to him, to lose himself in a power that was equal to but different from his own.

_Tom-_

"Get off me, freak!"

Theron started awake, the dream slipping from his awareness like smoke through grasping fingers. He blinked the familiar feeling of emptiness away.

A glance out the frosted window revealed a lightening overcast sky and fields of thick, undisturbed snow. Even the bedroom, heated as it was by three bodies, was cold enough to turn Theron's breath into lingering silver clouds. He was shivering, his ratty nightshirt clammy with sweat, and had obviously tried to escape the cold sometime during the night by curling into the side of his roommate.

A rough shove from the bigger body beside him almost sent him over the edge of the bed. "I said off!" Jason grunted, squirming away from Theron as though he were a disease that could be caught.

Theron ignored him as he untangled the blanket from his legs and bravely slipped his bare feet to the cold stone floor. He dressed quietly and carefully in his most worn and shapeless clothing, ignoring Jason's grumbled insults and Mikhail's mocking sniggers and whined complaints about his frozen toes. There were bigger problems to face today than bullies and a bit of cold.

As he made his slow, reluctant way through a drafty hallway, down a flight of frosted stone stairs, and across the dawn-lit entrance hall, he prayed again and again to long forgotten gods that he was too young, too strange, too unremarkable to tempt them.

He was still praying as he slipped through the door to the dining hall and their gazes fell upon him, bored at first, then measuring, then hungry. The weight of those greedy eyes sent a thrill of terror down his spine, and it was all he could do to make his slow way to a bench as far from them as he could get and keep his trembling body from fleeing. Six pairs of eyes followed him, not seven, he had time to notice before dropping his gaze to his plate; the new, slender man he had seen the night before wasn't with them.

Something told Theron his world would change that day, and not for the better.

* * *

><p>"I've found one, Lady," Adrian told the visage in the mirror. It was a woman's face, elegant and striking, with long features and hard angles and deep-set slanted eyes. A silky fall of blood-red hair curtained her face, styled straight and simple - a stark contrast to her arresting and unusual features.<p>

She sat tall and posture-perfect in a high-backed velvet armchair, graceful hands curling over its arms and the room behind her black with shadows. She was firescrying, Adrian realized, and the glow of the flames chased shadows across her features and wove warmth into her hair. Her gown was rich and simple, made of silk that flared red and indigo and ink-dark green with every pulse of the flames.

The woman's perfect lips quirked and curled into a smile as lovely as her eyes were fierce. "Good, good," she said in her usual cultured purr. "And Thomas?"

"A day gone," Adrian answered. "He left wards, though, a whole net of them. Concealment, protection, and entrapment, interestingly enough. They were a devil to unravel."

His Lady frowned. "How curious..." she mused. "Any idea what drew him there?"

Adrian sighed, subconsciously 'sending out his feelers,' as his Lady put it, to track the child. He was leaving the dining hall, his distinct aura skittish and disturbed. Three guesses what had frightened him.

"I'd wager Lord Thorn was drawn by same thing that drew me," he said, bringing his mind back to the conversation. "The boy is quite powerful, and there's something off about it - creature blood, most definitely, but I don't know what kind." He paused, tasting the strength and nature of the child's power for the hundredth time since his arrival at the orphanage, trying once again to figure out what he was.

Adrian's first impression of the boy's aura was that it was shallow, as befit his lack of training and experience. The control was there, interestingly enough; he'd managed to teach himself to use his talent for _something,_ and from the way the walls of the orphanage pulsed with a dull and malignant kind of intelligence – the primitive dredges of a ward - he could venture a fairly good guess what.

Adrian barely needed to skim the surface of his power to see that it was inordinate. Its swiftness alone revealed the strength he would eventually command – it flowed and danced around him in a great current of color, like a waterfall of liquid gemstones, each one representing a different shade of warmth. The fall was very dark and very cold – colder than any Adrian had ever known a gifted to command, almost as cold as the power the creatures of the Shadowside were said to own.

Despite that, though, its rhythm - at least on the surface - was rapid and light, reminding Adrian of the currents commanded by the few full fay he had the misfortune of knowing – with one key difference. Every fay Adrian had ever met, be they Timber or Water or Sky, had an aura so bright it burned and blinded him - nothing at all like this boy's.

And the deeper Adrian reached into his power, the more foreign and mysterious it became. Beneath the layer of rhythm and energy was stillness of a kind he had never felt from any living being, the stillness all currents adapted in the moment of their commander's death - the moment they turned traitor and erupted into the storm of power that would ultimately destroy him. Adrian didn't dare dive deeper into that.

But most shocking of all was the purity of it. The auras of most gifted swirled with a motley mix of colors that mellowed into monochrome warmth – the consequence of too much crossing of creature lines over generations. But this boy's aura was so exclusively dark and cold and so distinctly _other_ that Adrian really didn't know what to make of it.

The one thing he did know with absolute certainty was that whatever it was, his Lady would want it.

"Adrian?" came her voice, pulling him from the maze of power he'd lost himself in.

"Some kind of fay, I think" he mused, a line of confusion growing between his brows. He sighed, his eyes meeting his Lady's once again. "Whatever it is, he's got more than half of it."

That got his Lady's attention. "More than half?" she breathed, her eyes lighting with interest and a hint of greed. "And you still can't tell what he is?"

"It's certainly not a type I've seen before, Lady," Adrian said. "It moves like a Timberfay's, but the feel of it matches what they say of shadowsiders – heavy and cold and…still. I've never felt anything like it."

There were a few heartbeats of silence. Adrian watched as his Lady thought, wishing, not for the first time, that her mind was as open to him as his was to her whenever she cared to listen. All of her was beautiful – her body, her face, her strength, her power, but her mind was one beauty he would never know, and something told him it would be the most wondrous.

You don't become the Monarch of Noble for nothing, after all.

"Still, you say?" his Lady said several moments later, leaning forward in her chair, her elegant fingers clenched like talons in the fabric of its arms. There was fire in her gaze, and more _want_ then Adrian had seen in the eyes of all his men combined.

"Like death, Lady," he said, wondering what hell he was condemning this boy to.

"Shadowfay," his Lady breathed, eyes and face ablaze with triumph, and the child's fate was sealed.

* * *

><p>The hours passed cold and slow. Matron Cole kept the children home from school and in plain view of her guests - or she tried, at least. Theron had fled the breakfast table the moment he was finished eating, his belly full for the first time in a month with food that tasted like ashes going down. He'd holed up in the attic, a dusty, crumbling old room at the top of the Secret Staircase that no one ever used - the children, because it was dark and cold and whined eerily on windy days, and the adults because the children were never to be found there.<p>

He'd brought a book and candle and the blanket off his bed, no doubt to his roommates' consternation, and there he stayed as the light moved across the floor and eventually faded.

He was halfway through his candle and in the last pages of his book - a worn-out old tome chronicling ages long gone - when the creaky step halfway up the Secret Staircase screamed.

Theron froze.

It was no good hiding, he knew, and judging from the abruptly unmuffled sound of footsteps climbing the last few stairs, the sneak agreed with him.

Theron sat up and closed his book, pulling the blanket tight around him as the door swung open and the figure behind it slipped inside.

It was the seventh clergyman, Theron realized instantly. The man was tall and ribbon-slender, with fine-boned hands and a long fall of the most beautiful gold hair Theron had ever seen._ Lovely_ was the first word that came to mind as Theron looked at him - lovely and delicate and noble, much too noble to truly be one of_ them. _

"Who are you?" Theron asked, realizing as soon as the words had passed his lips that they were the wrong ones.

The man's perfect mouth quirked into a smile pretty enough to make Theron blush, and then the world exploded.

Or so it felt, at least. The currents, previously no more than a gentle whisper playing in the shadows of Theron's awareness, had erupted into a wild storm around the man that stood before him now, the same way they had around the dark-haired man the day before. And just as the men themselves were as different as night and day, so too were their powers; where the dark-haired man had painted the world beautiful with shadows and music and depth, _this _man set everything ablaze in a fiery dance of color Theron couldn't see, but that lapped shades of warmth against his skin and mind and what he only now realized was the current he _himself_ commanded - a power he had often used but never understood.

'Who are you?' had been the wrong question to ask. More compelling and pressing was the question that had tormented him all his life, the one that his roommates answered with "freak" and the adults answered with "off" and that he had never dared voice to himself, for fear that he would be forced to agree with them.

"What am I?" he breathed, eyes wide and face pale, somehow knowing that this man - this exquisite creature of fire and color - could give him an answer, because he and Theron were _(freak-off_-other) the same.

Blue eyes flared with triumph as that lovely smile sharpened into something wicked and cruel - a shark's grin on the face of an angel, a threat wrapped up in beauty. His voice was honey-sweet and lilting when he answered, "That, my dear, is an _excellent_ question."

And then the currents flexed and twisted, and the world went black.

**Posted 11.04.2012**


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